Ultrabilitation: beyond recovery-oriented rehabilitation

Purpose: Current rehabilitation models emphasize therapy that attempts to return to "normal" the lives of persons who are disabled. An opportunity is available to scrutinize whether this recovery orientation of rehabilitation is necessarily optimal. Method: This conceptual article uses reasoning, informed by experience and a nonsystematic review of literature across diverse disciplines. Results: For some persons with disability, optimizing recovery might be unwanted or insufficient. To expand rehabilitation, we append the Latin "ultra", beyond, to "habilitare", make fit. The resulting term, "ultrabilitate", commits to human flourishing that moves persons toward, around or beyond recovery of particular functioning. Conclusions: By expanding the scope of disability management, ultrabilitation could inform therapy selection and facilitate human flourishing. Empirical research is needed to test our ideas.